The New Yorker on poetry published in medical journals

Johanna F. Shapiro, co-editor at Families, Systems, & Health, directs the program for medical humanities at the University of California, Irvine, School of Medicine. “You think a patient is going to be like a well-organized essay, but what you really get is a poem,” she told me. “You’re not sure what they mean, and they don’t tell you everything all at once, up front.”